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Speaker: Louise W. Knight, Jane Addams biographer

Did you ever wonder how American social public policy began? In her lecture, Louise Knight will discuss Jane Addams’ role, in partnership with other settlement house leaders, in shaping our nation’s social welfare system. In the early twentieth century, there were few protections or supports at the state level, and none at the federal level. It was Addams and others who lobbied for, with mixed success, the minimum wage, minimum hours, mothers’ pensions (the first social security legislation), the end of child labor, and industrial safety regulations. And it was in these early decades, between 1900 and 1915, that the nation had its first debate over national health care insurance, thanks to the arguments put forward by progressives like Jane Addams. Addams's arguments for why the government should take on expanded roles are as important as her political activism. Knight will share Addams’s ideas about our shared civic responsibilities and the role of the government in a democracy in protecting the vulnerable and consider their implications for our public policy debates today.